If not for the baseball strike that killed the World Series, 1994 would have been a pretty good year in sports locally and nationally.
Of course, that is like saying that you had a pretty good day except for the part when you learned you'd lost every penny of your life savings in a real estate swindle.
The bad news is so bad, so stupefyingly awful, that no amount of good news could ever offset it.
A lot of good things happened this year, but it is impossible to label this a good year because the baseball strike is such an odious affair, a massive blight on the toy department.
A year in which the World Series is canceled for the first time since 1904 is a terrible year by any reckoning.
A year in which there is a strike that has the owners considering using replacement players, the ultimate sacrilege, is a terrible year by any reckoning.
The quote that best sums up 1994 came from the mouth of Nancy Kerrigan, who offered this explanation for why her parents were so supportive of her skating career: "They've known me since I was born."
It was a dumb (and dumber) year.
Dumb is an appropriate adjective for the self-destruction of a billion-dollar industry in which everyone has scads of money. (The hockey work stoppage, which managed to blunt every ounce of the momentum the long-suffering sport finally was gaining, isn't exactly the work of genius either.)
It was a year that will be long remembered, for all the wrong reasons. Fifty years from now, kids perusing their Baseball Encyclopedia will have to stop and ask their parents what happened in 1994, why the game's long and glorious time line was so suddenly interrupted. Rest assured, the dark legacy will have a long life.
This was a year when baseball broke its fundamental contract with its fans, the one that guarantees that they get a finite conclusion, a champion, in return for showing interest and buying tickets.
It's too bad, because otherwise 1994 was almost a year worth recommending.
It was a year in which 45-year-old George Foreman regained the heavyweight championship some two decades after he had lost it, proving that it is never too late to give up on your dreams.
It was a year in which soccer's World Cup came to the United States and shone with a brilliance no one could have envisioned, with fullstadiums, lively games and solid U.S. television ratings. The rest of the world thought we'd scribble a mustache on their Mona Lisa, and we wound up painting it better than they ever had.
It was a year in which Norway put on a Winter Olympics that came close to perfection. Clear skies, cold weather, snow on the ground, roaring crowds, Johann Olav Koss, Bonnie Blair, Dan Jansen. The feeling in the air was so clean and crisp that it became embarrassing to have to care about Tonya and Nancy. As one American reporter said at the end, "Atlanta [in 1996] won't be able to top this."
It was a year in which a gray thoroughbred named Holy Bull raced with a prowess unseen in more than a decade; a year in which Andre Agassi put some life back into tennis by finally getting serious about playing; a year in which maybe, just maybe, the next Nicklaus arrived in the form of Ernie Els.
Locally, it was a year in which pro football returned to Baltimore. Sure, it was just the CFL, but the games were entertaining, the team was a winner and a lot of people had fun with it. Those who pooh-poohed it were just so many Scrooges.
It was a year in which the University of Maryland basketball team finally escaped the shadow of the Len Bias tragedy and rejoined the game's elite, thanks mostly to a splendid young center named Joe Smith.
It was a year in which the Bullets finally showed some life, making a trade that has the potential to get them off the dull track they've ridden for years. Although things haven't worked out since Chris Webber arrived, he is a player around whom a serious contender can be built.
It was a year in which Peter Angelos put Baltimore in perfect position to land an NFL franchise. He is offering more for the Tampa Bay Bucs than anyone down there can offer, he is ready for a legal fight and his offer is given weight by the prospect of a taxpayer-funded, state-of-the-art stadium. If it doesn't happen in it's never going to happen.
All in all, it could have been a very good year.
But let's face it, a year without a World Series is no year at all.